As for the religious aspect, not only is it appealing to those is desperate circumstances, I think their is some evolutionary advantage to it.

I don't see the rise of religion as being evolutionary advantagous as much as I see it as a side effect of evolution. I think it's a by-product of the pattern recognition skills that made us such a successful species. Evolution designed us to survive on the plains. It's also why we've gotten so fat (your brain rewards you chemically for eating "bad" food because that's what kept you alive when you only ate once every two weeks). Pattern recognition allowed us to make cognitive leaps and associations that kept us alive from predators and the elements. Once the very basics of survival were satiated with the dawn of early civilization, the evolutionary programming didn't just go away. It was instead freed to make leaps beyond the basics. Freed from having to worry about eating or not being eaten literally every moment of every day, the human was able to ponder the "big" questions, hence, the byproduct that is religion and mysticism.

The only thing more baffling to me about why so many people still take the Bible literally is why

A) the Catholic Church still acts as if it has a sliver of moral authority, and

B) anyone cares

I have nothing against individual Catholic people, but the organization itself, at least the hierarchy, up to and including the Vatican and Pope Benedict himself, is scum.

This is hyperbolic. Even their worst scandal, all the pedophile Priests, was not as widespread as the media wants everyone to believe. It was like < .05% of Priests. Did they cover for them, yes. So did Penn State, and so is (currently) Hollywood.

"This is just plain false. There's absolutely no evidence that priests are more likely to abuse children than are other groups of men. The use and abuse of children as objects for the sexual gratification of adults is epidemic in all classes, professions, religions, and ethnic communities across the globe, as figures on child pornography, incest, and child prostitution make abundantly clear. Pedophilia (the sexual abuse of a prepubescent child) among priests is extremely rare, affecting only 0.3% of the entire population of clergy. This figure, cited in the book Pedophiles and Priests by non-Catholic scholar, Philip Jenkins, is from the most comprehensive study to date, which found that only one out of 2,252 priests considered over a thirty-year period was afflicted with pedophilia. In the recent Boston scandal, only four of the more than eighty priests labeled by the media as "pedophiles" are actually guilty of molesting young children."

This is hyperbolic. Even their worst scandal, all the pedophile Priests, was not as widespread as the media wants everyone to believe. It was like < .05% of Priests. Did they cover for them, yes. So did Penn State, and so is (currently) Hollywood.

"This is just plain false. There's absolutely no evidence that priests are more likely to abuse children than are other groups of men. The use and abuse of children as objects for the sexual gratification of adults is epidemic in all classes, professions, religions, and ethnic communities across the globe, as figures on child pornography, incest, and child prostitution make abundantly clear. Pedophilia (the sexual abuse of a prepubescent child) among priests is extremely rare, affecting only 0.3% of the entire population of clergy. This figure, cited in the book Pedophiles and Priests by non-Catholic scholar, Philip Jenkins, is from the most comprehensive study to date, which found that only one out of 2,252 priests considered over a thirty-year period was afflicted with pedophilia. In the recent Boston scandal, only four of the more than eighty priests labeled by the media as "pedophiles" are actually guilty of molesting young children."

They may have a checkered past, but hey, who doesn't?

Firstly it is immensely more widespread and institutional than what you, and they, are attempting to deflect from. Secondly, it is even more damning for an institution that claims to be a moral/spiritual authority to abuse that as well. Had it only been one priest, and the church had covered it up and failed to act the way it has all the way to the top, it'd be evil. But what they have done is inhuman. These aren't just sins that they've deliberately, repeatedly , and institutionally covered up and failed to resolve, they're crimes against humanity. It's not just the numbers, it's the failure to act accordingly against it, and the failure to stop it from continuing...when they all knew about it. It is one of the worst acts of hypocrisy and indecency in human history.

This, above all else that the Catholic Church purportedly represents, is what they need to answer for to the satisfaction of the victims, not to their own bureaucracy. Yes it happens in other areas of life...and it any more or less excusable there? This isn't 'blown out of proportion', its the tip of the iceberg. And it's not about a 'war on religion', it's about purposely avoiding the consequences or evildoing by hiding behind a veil of power. It happens elsewhere? Pointing to examples elsewhere means nothing. Sure....but we know it happens here and has continued to do so. They need to face up to that, period. You need to watch the HBO piece.

Firstly it is immensely more widespread and institutional than what you, and they, are attempting to deflect from. Secondly, it is even more damning for an institution that claims to be a moral/spiritual authority to abuse that as well. Had it only been one priest, and the church had covered it up and failed to act the way it has all the way to the top, it'd be evil. But what they have done is inhuman. These aren't just sins that they've deliberately, repeatedly , and institutionally covered up and failed to resolve, they're crimes against humanity. It's not just the numbers, it's the failure to act accordingly against it, and the failure to stop it from continuing...when they all knew about it. It is one of the worst acts of hypocrisy and indecency in human history.

This, above all else that the Catholic Church purportedly represents, is what they need to answer for to the satisfaction of the victims, not to their own bureaucracy. Yes it happens in other areas of life...and it any more or less excusable there? This isn't 'blown out of proportion', its the tip of the iceberg. And it's not about a 'war on religion', it's about purposely avoiding the consequences or evildoing by hiding behind a veil of power. It happens elsewhere? Pointing to examples elsewhere means nothing. Sure....but we know it happens here and has continued to do so. They need to face up to that, period. You need to watch the HBO piece.

Sorry, all you're doing is trying to unfairly smear the Catholic Church for doing what any entity that makes money or relies on money does in that situation. No, I'm not defending it, but you're falling right into the Press' trap on that. Sure they're gonna make it seem like a massive institutional epidemic; it's more controversial than saying "well, statistically speaking this is about as common as any institution and the way they handled it reflects just about the same response as Penn State, Hollywood and everyone else". Yes, when money is involved typically the response is to try to cover something until it finally spills out. Try to handle it in house before bringing in the police and authorities. That's kind...of...common.

How many Jack Nicholson movies do you watch? You okay with him sheltering a rapist in his basement? You okay with how his publicist and manager covered for him because he's worth a ton of f***ing money to them and if he were outed as a sex offender it might really hurt their bottom line?

You okay with how the Ravens handled Ray Lewis? They could've left him to his own devices, and I guarantee that would've played out differently.

I'm sorry but all of this is just pot calling a kettle black.

All you're doing is being pretty unfair to one organization because your already biased against what they do in the first place.

Catholic Church, by and large, does a lot more good than harm. Sorry. This is just Man Bites Dog journalism at it's finest and you're falling for it.

I'm sure you also realize most of the accused Catholic Priests (about 80%) were found innocent of all charges? Right? Or do you just read the allegations and never bother to see what the results are? Sorry, the whole thing was a cooked up controversy. There were no more pedophile priests than what you would expect to find statistically in any organization, or given population.

And how do you feel about that? No-one's saying it doesn't happen elsewhere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Optimus_Prime_

Sorry, all you're doing is trying to unfairly smear the Catholic Church for doing what any entity that makes money or relies on money does in that situation. No, I'm not defending it, but you're falling right into the Press' trap on that. Sure they're gonna make it seem like a massive institutional epidemic; it's more controversial than saying "well, statistically speaking this is about as common as any institution and the way they handled it reflects just about the same response as Penn State, Hollywood and everyone else". Yes, when money is involved typically the response is to try to cover something until it finally spills out. Try to handle it in house before bringing in the police and authorities. That's kind...of...common.

How many Jack Nicholson movies do you watch? You okay with him sheltering a rapist in his basement? You okay with how his publicist and manager covered for him because he's worth a ton of f***ing money to them and if he were outed as a sex offender it might really hurt their bottom line?

You okay with how the Ravens handled Ray Lewis? They could've left him to his own devices, and I guarantee that would've played out differently.

I'm sorry but all of this is just pot calling a kettle black.

All you're doing is being pretty unfair to one organization because your already biased against what they do in the first place.

Catholic Church, by and large, does a lot more good than harm. Sorry. This is just Man Bites Dog journalism at it's finest and you're falling for it.

Again, you're trying to deflect. Nothing that you've mentioned a) deserves a pass, b) takes away from the evil that they've continued to do. It's not about smearing religion as a concept or what have you...it's about them institutionally concealing their crimes and abusing religion and power. They, like the others need to face the full consequences. This isn't about bias, again these are crimes against humanity period...whether they or if my own brother committed them.

So if you're on behalf of the Catholic Church, thanks for bringing up Penn State and Ray Lewis.....congratulations, you're now part of a hell of a club.

And how do you feel about that? No-one's saying it doesn't happen elsewhere.

Again, you're trying to deflect. Nothing that you've mentioned a) deserves a pass, b) takes away from the evil that they've continues to do. It's not about smearing religion as a concept or what have you...it's about them institutionally concealing their crimes and abusing religion. They, like the others need to face the full consequences.

So if you're on behalf of the Catholic Church, thanks for bringing up Penn State and Ray Lewis.....congratulations, you're now part of a hell of a club.

Dude, 10 years before the controversy even hit the press they were trying to get rid of them. You can find articles in Catholic newsletters where they talk about ongoing investigations they were conducting. Again, you're just falling for hype. It's sad.

For the last time: IT WAS NOT THAT WIDESPREAD AT ALL. PERIOD. MOST DID NOT EVEN KNOW IT WAS GOING ON LIKE YOU'D EXPECT.

It's not like pedophiles go around announcing their behavior to everyone.

That's why it's not the media sensation it was anymore either. Most of the accusations were completely false, btw, I love how you don't address that.

All it is, is when a high profile case hits the press they print every allegation. Most of what you heard were rumors and allegations, not truth.

Have you ever heard of "Satanic Ritual Abuse"? It was a myth concocted in the 1980s that there were giant pedophile rings [insert institution here] and that a giant cover up was being used to cover them. This same story cycles through the news media every decade or so. It's just a myth. Generally when the press is finally breaking the story about a pedophile case is about the time the investigation the organization itself is conducting is reporting it's findings. That's usually how the press comes to learn of it in the first place.

Also, statistically speaking; doctors and teachers are far more likely to be pedophiles.

Dude, 10 years before the controversy even hit the press they were trying to get rid of them. Again, you're just falling for hype. It's sad.

For the last time: IT WAS NOT THAT WIDESPREAD AT ALL. PERIOD. MOST DID NOT EVEN KNOW IT WAS GOING ON LIKE YOU'D EXPECT.

It's not like pedophiles go around announcing their behavior to everyone.

That's why it's not the media sensation it was anymore either.

Don't you get it?

If it happened only once...and the church institutionally concealed it and failed to rectify it the way it did with full knowledge, through the authoritative channels that knew about it did, it is humanly wrong. Just once. But they repeatedly failed to do so...in the US and in Europe. It's not about Catholicism specifically breeding pedophiles, it's their failure to stop it while knowing it's continuing.

Watch the HBO piece, specifically show where the media has somehow misrepresented the law suits, the internal investigations, the actual knowledge on the part of the archdiocese and so on, etc. You, like then, are desperately attempting to deflect. But the fact is that this DID happen, and continued to. And everyone from the actual current pope down has blood on their hands...they knew about it, and didn't act accordingly so that they could maintain their veil of authority. And just like in any walk of life, they need to answer to that and pay the legal consequences, not hide behind their so-called 'state' status. Them, Penn State, whoever...no one deserves a pass.

It's not a religious problem, or one with religion as a practice....it's a human one within the sanctuary and beaurocracy of religion, and one that they are running from.

The Daily Beast spoke with Gibney (filmmaker) about Pope Benedict XVI’s culpability in the scandal, the church’s policy of forced celibacy, and a backlash of criticism of his film from a prominent victims’ group.

The Daily Beast: Explain the title of the film.

Gibney: There’s a point in mass when you beat your chest three times and say “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” In my day, it was translated “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” That seemed to me a pretty good title for the film. It’s followed by the subtitle Silence in the House of God, which has a double meaning in this context, both because of the deaf survivors and the crimes that the church was silently overseeing.

The story of sex abuse in the Catholic Church has been told in a number of other recent documentary films. Why retell the story?

There were two things: this local case, the Milwaukee case, uncovered documents that lead straight to the top, straight to Joseph Ratzinger—then-cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. So you could see this sex-abuse crisis not as a few bad apples, but evidence of a rotten barrel. The other thing was, for all the darkness about this story, it was oddly inspirational for me. These guys at the heart of the story, these deaf men, mounted the very first public protest of clerical sex abuse in the United States. This is a case where a priest abused 200 deaf children. What more heinous crime could you imagine? But the victims, who were so marginalized because they couldn’t speak to a hearing audience, nevertheless managed to have a huge impact—from a small parish in Milwaukee all the way to the top of the Vatican.

You point out in the film that the same thing—Catholic priests assaulting deaf children—happened in Verona, Italy. Was this deliberate strategy, to attack children who were even more defenseless than the average child?

I think you have to see it as pure predatory behavior. We can accept that there are predators everywhere—Boy Scouts, Penn State—but what the Catholic Church is clearly responsible for is harboring those predators, not punishing them, moving them around [to other parishes]. For a long time, the church has said that clerical sex abuse could either be blamed on the 1960s or the United States—the licentiousness of the country, that’s the problem. We didn’t know about the Verona case when we started the film. It was an exact parallel to the case in Milwaukee. The priests “reach out” to those deaf students because they are helpless. In fact, we found out in Milwaukee that the priests particularly sought out kids whose parents could not sign. So the predator priest (who could sign) was actually an intermediary between the kids and their parents. Horrible.

There is a bit in the film about forced celibacy. But these priests aren’t seeing prostitutes. And we see this happening, for instance, in the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn right now. Is there something particular to the church here? Is there something about religion that allows this to happen?

What’s peculiar about the Roman Catholic Church is that at the heart of its doctrine is a lie—the lie of forced celibacy. One of the former priests ... did a study for the church to try to understand the sex lives of priests and found that over 50 percent of priests, that he could ascertain, were not observing celibacy. So that leads to a system of secrecy and blackmail, a kind of protective quality, with anything that has to do with sexuality. So as a result, I think that predators intuitively or instinctively sought out an environment like that.

Do you think that if the rules on celibacy were loosened, this would change things considerably?

I do think in the Catholic Church that if you take away forced celibacy, you take away the inherent hypocrisy and secrecy at the heart of the institution. I think forced celibacy is idiotic. I believe that you can choose to be celibate and that you can train people to be celibate. But if you eliminate forced celibacy, I think you’d eliminate the issues that compel priests to abuse or to keep quiet about the abuse.

You say that Pope Ratzinger and the former Pope John Paul knew this was happening and covered it up in a Joe Paterno kind of way.

I don’t see Ratzinger as a monster. I see him as a deeply flawed human being who aided and abetted criminality. I think he is offended by men who abuse their power by abusing children. He says he is disgusted by [the abuse], and I believe him. But he lives within this institution, with this group of men who exist between mortals and the angels, and he favors protecting the institution to protecting the children. That to me is his great crime. It makes him weak, and, ultimately, I think it makes him a criminal.

One victims group, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), criticized the film for it sympathetic treatment of former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who himself was embroiled in scandal and accused of ignoring sexual abuse in the church. What do you make of their criticism?

The criticism from the SNAP people, with regards to Archbishop Weakland, was that I was too easy on him, that he was a malefactor also, that he didn’t do nearly enough ... They would argue that he aided and abetted crimes by pedophile priests. That may be so. He was a guy who was valuable for a number of reasons. He had a personal connection to Ratzinger—he knew him—and at some moment in time, say what you will about what he had done previously, he tried to do something for those victims. Whether it was a conversion for him or whether it was this particular case because they were deaf children, he sensed that justice needed to be done. So I didn’t want to vilify him. He was also a very famous liberal priest, in terms of economic justice and so forth. In a film like this you can only show so much crime. I left out some stuff about Ratzinger in the film too. The fact is, [Ratzinger] moved pedophile priests around when he was archbishop of Munich. So much depravity, so little time.

Can we please turn this thread back onto discussing Atheism and not Catholic priests touching little boys?

I for one am interested in that topic, not what this has turned into.

Just my thought on the matter :/

Can the Catholic Church please do what's right and appropriately face the criminal consequences of their actions? This is about religion as an institution, and what can often turn one towards atheism...unfairly in a lot of cases because something like that is, at its core, a very human problem, but reflects badly on the institution that allows it to continue. Unfortunately, a lot of atheism is fueled by a certain personal hatred for religion, rather than a more objective scrutiny of its innate irrationality. And the church itself should realize that its narcissism isn't helping its cause....we're not all the blind sheep that they thought we were any more.

Sorry, all you're doing is trying to unfairly smear the Catholic Church for doing what any entity that makes money or relies on money does in that situation.

The Catholic Church isn't alone in this, but that just means that there are several institutions that are just as bad, it doesn't absolve the church of anything.

But also keep in mind that the Church derives its power from attempting to represent a moral authority and doing so has given them a vast amount of power in different places and times. Even if their power is somewhat diminished, they still attempt to influence the policies of nations throughout the world and are often still quite adept at swaying the conversation on a variety of topics.

Furthermore, there are a variety of legal loopholes that make the Church difficult to investigate or prosecute.

The Catholic Church isn't alone in this, but that just means that there are several institutions that are just as bad, it doesn't absolve the church of anything.

But also keep in mind that the Church derives its power from attempting to represent a moral authority and doing so has given them a vast amount of power in different places and times. Even if their power is somewhat diminished, they still attempt to influence the policies of nations throughout the world and are often still quite adept at swaying the conversation on a variety of topics.

Furthermore, there are a variety of legal loopholes that make the Church difficult to investigate or prosecute.